The Tin Can Tree

'You were going to tell us if Ansel's here,' she reminded Miss Faye.

'Yes. Yes, I was saying – Lucy? Lucy, are you coming to say hello?'

They heard Miss Lucy's footsteps, sounding very faint and taking a long time to weave in and out among the screens. First she came close and then went farther away again, and suddenly she popped out right behind Miss Faye. She wore a huge white apron with jokes about outdoor barbecues printed all over it.

'Lucy, look who's here,' said Miss Faye.

'Well, isn't this nice?' Miss Lucy came towards them with both hands outstretched, making James wonder, just as he always did, what he was supposed to do when she reached him – hug her? – but Joan saved the day by stepping up and taking both Miss Lucy's hands in her own. 'You're looking just as healthy,' Miss Lucy told her, and then gave a little giggle and shook her tight cap of curls. 'We've had so much company today that I'm getting all -'

'Well, that's really what we came to talk about,' said James.

'Aren't you going to sit down?'

'We wanted to ask -'

'You have to sit down.' She began backing around the first screen, still holding Joan's hands. James glanced over at a puffy plush chair, with its layers and layers of antimacassars, and then shook his head.

'I'm sorry,' he said, 'but it looks like Ansel isn't here, and that's what we came about.'

'Oh yes. Yes, he was here.'

'When?' James asked.

'At three o'clock today, on the nose. No, more like three fifteen. I forget, Faye… '

'It was three twenty exactly,' said Miss Faye. 'It was my turn to wear the brooch-watch today. I had looked down at it, while checking to see if my blouse was clean, just before I answered the door. And it was Ansel at the door. Will you sit down, please?'

'That was nearly two hours ago,' James said.

'No, you're wrong, James.' 'Well, it's way past five.'

'Oh, it was nearly two hours ago that he came, all right. But it was more recently that he left, because he stayed to have a jam braid.'

'Well-'

'Also a glass of milk. I said, "Ansel, we've got to get some meat on your bones." So did Miss Lucy. She said so too. Ansel said, "Oh, Miss Faye, I just don't know." He was feeling sad.'

'What about?' asked James.

'He didn't say. Well, you know how he is. Some days the world is just too much for him. That's how he put it. "Miss Faye," he said, "some days the world is just too much for me." He told Lucy that too. "Miss Lucy," he said, "some days the-"'

'Did he say where he was going?'

'Why, home, I reckon.'

'I have to leave,' James said.

'Oh, now. You only just-'

'I'm sorry, Miss Faye. Come on, Joan.'

He reached the door before Miss Faye could, and he slid the bolts back himself, with Miss Faye's hands fluttering anxiously above his. Then he shot out on the porch, not even trying to be polite about it. Joan followed, but with her head turned toward the Potters, her voice drifting back to them as she tried to smooth everything over. 'I'm sorry we have to leave this way,' she said, 'but I know you see how it is -' and the Potters made thin, sad little sound to show that they did.

'Just please come back,' Miss Faye told them, and James nodded tiredly and let the door swing shut. The two bolts slid back into place.

When they were outside again James just stood there, trying to think where to begin. Joan didn't seem worried at all. She said, 'I got tobacco gum all over Miss Lucy's hands.'

'That's too bad,' James said absently.

'She was staring at her hands all funny-like; that's how I noticed. Little bits of black were sticking to them.'

James turned around and looked at her. 'Will you listen?' he told her. 'I can't find Ansel.'

'I'm sorry, James.' She grew serious, and came over to stand beside him. 'He'll come back,' she said.

'I don't know.'

'He always has before.'

'Well, I just don't know,' James said. He knelt to tie his shoe and then stayed that way, looking down the porch to see who might be coming along the road. No one was in sight. 'We don't know what might have happened,' he said.

Joan squatted down beside him and said, 'Well, he's come back every other time, James.'

'You already said that.'

'I just meant -'

'I know he comes back. I been through this a hundred times. If I didn't even go looking for him, he'd come back. But I can't be a hundred per cent sure of that.'

Down the road came a red hen, strutting importantly, sticking her neck far out as if she were heading someplace definite. As she walked she talked to herself, in little conversational clucks. James and Joan watched after her until she had disappeared.

'Somehow I can't get what Maisie said off my mind,' James said finally. 'How would I feel if just once he went too far? There'd be no one to blame but me, if that happened.'

'Maisie who?' Joan asked.

'Maisie Hammond.'

'Well, if you did go after him, you know how it'd be. You ever seen Ansel standing on a street corner waiting for you? He goes somewhere you'd never think to look, James. You go up and down town all night searching for him, waking every drinking man to ask him if he knows, and where does it get you? You always end up right here, waiting for him to decide to come back.

'I like to think I looked,' James said.

'I know that.' She stood up again, and the cotton smell of her shirt floated past him. 'I can see it better than you can,' she told him. 'I don't like him. I can see easier than you how he will always come back.'

'You can't see.'

'Look,' Joan said. 'What's got into you? Things were getting better for a while. You weren't fussing over him, and he had almost stopped wandering off. Why have you started acting this way?'

He stared down at her feet, long and dirty in sandals that had molded themselves to the curl of her toes. Her feet made him so angry that he almost didn't answer her. But then she looked down at him, with her face worried and unsure, and he said, 'I don't know.'

'Well, there's got to be some reason.'

'Will you stop asking me that? You don't have a brother.'

'Maybe not,' Joan said, 'but there is nothing I like or understand about you going to look for Ansel all the time. If he wanted he could have done a full day's work today, and been off at a dance right now.'

'No, he couldn't.'

'Yes, he could. He could be dancing and you and I could be going someplace. We could be doing something. We could be someone besides an old familiar couple that'll be courting when they're seventy and the town's fondest joke. Are you listening?'

'No, 'James said.

He got up off his knees and went down the porch steps. Bits of tobacco gum and dust from the floorboards clung to the knees of his pants, but he didn't brush them off. The sunset glowed red and dull across the roof of the pickup. 'Don't bother fixing supper,' he called.

'I wouldn't think of fixing supper.'

He stopped and look back at her. She was standing at the edge of the porch now, with her arms folded and her feet planted solidly apart. 'I wish you'd wear some real shoes once,' he said.

'What?'

'I'm sick of those sandals.'

'Well, I'm sick of everything,' Joan said.

Her voice was flat now, and only sad-sounding. It made him look back at her one more time, but by then she had turned away and was walking down the porch. 'Joan?' he said. She went on walking, not answering. From behind, her folded arms gave her a thin, round-shouldered look, and she stepped in that gentle way she had, with her bare pointed heels rising and falling delicately across the long grey porch.